Thursday, February 28, 2019

Good, Strong Hands


dontravis.com blog post #326
  
Courtesy of Pixabay
How about another short story this week? Hope you enjoy.

*****
 GOOD, STRONG HANDS

Who in the hell gets thrown in jail for lipping off to a cop nowadays, particularly a stockbroker not yet thirty who’s busy racking up his third million? Money guarantees a fellow a get-out-of-jail card, doesn’t it? Even in a place like Albuquerqueespecially in a place like the Duke City. Well, not for Parker Welles… that’s me. There was a little more to the ‘incident’ than that, of course. I was rip-roaring drunk after a nasty row over absolutely nothing with my girlfriend when the cop stopped us. Thank god, I wasn’t driving, Nellann was. That relationship had probably come to a nasty end tonight. Funny how epiphanies are often kick-started by inanities. Ever notice that?
Apparently calling one of APD’s finest a ‘son of a bitch’ rates right up there with serial murder. And standing before the bar proclaiming the judge a ‘crotchety old bastard’ apparently compounds the crime exponentially, but what the hell, I was drunk on my ass. The verdict… guilty. The sentence… forty-eight hours in hizzoner’s free downtown hotel.
It takes forever to break into the Duke City jailhouse given all the paperwork and waiting for your name to be called, but I eventually managed it. The city was busy moving most of its provincial felons into a brand-new facility way the hell and gone out on the west side, thus the downtown pokey, where the authorities decided I would accept hizzoner’s kind invitation, was now only semi-occupied when normally it would have been half past full.
Eventually, I was delivered to a small cell fronted with bars like you’ve seen in a thousand jailhouse movies. The sides, however, were solid, except for a gap of perhaps two inches between the side panels and the back wall, probably designed for the circulation of air. Without having to contend with a cellmate, I quickly grew accustomed to the clanging, rumbling, never-quite-silent ambiance of the place and was bored out of my skull within an hour.
My stress, already alarmingly high despite a cool-guy act, went soaring with movie images of mess hall violence when we were called out for dinner. As I marched down the long corridor following the felon ahead and trailed by the one behind, I took note of my next-door neighbor, the guy in front of me. Tall and slender but well-built, he wasn’t Hollywood’s idea of a convict. His skin was a smooth, natural tan, so he was likely Hispanic. As we turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of his face. Classically handsome… young, but already in that stage where young Latinos go from being girl-pretty to Valentino-virile. Nineteen or twenty was my guess.
I saw him again later as we went to clean up in a madhouse of yelling, cursing, rough-looking men in the shower room. Putting on my best tough-guy demeanor, I dived into the melee, and immediately spotted my next-door cellmate. Naked except for a towel around his slender waist, he was busy scraping off invisible whiskers with a safety razor held in long, graceful, and strangely sexy hands. Confused, I turned to my own toilet, trying to keep my eyes off the nameless young man, even as we rotated naked beneath the shower head after the shave. Was it my imagination, or did he give me a quick glance or two?
Later, as I lay in a bunk bolted hard against the side of my cell, I considered my reaction to the anonymous youth. Less than halfway through my sentence of forty-eight hours, I was thinking like a man denied women for the last ten years.
The lights winked off, so I slipped beneath the blanket and turned on my side, realizing as I did that my graceful young man was lying inches away on the other side of that thin steel wall. Expecting the night to be difficult because of the never-ceasing noise, I closed my eyes and sought a comfortable position, my left hand pressed against the wall with my fingers in the narrow opening between the two cells. Surprisingly, I dozed rather quickly…only to be startled awake. Something brushed my fingers. Instinctively, I snatched my hand away from the opening. What was that? Mice? Spiders? No, it had to have been my neighbor. His hand had hit mine, probably as he turned over. Ruing my sudden reaction, I curled my fingers back through the opening, wondering… hoping?... there would be contact again.
I dozed. I woke. I froze. A finger rested against the back of my hand. Slowly, it moved in what could only be described as a caress up and down the length of my curled fist. I opened my eyes. Afraid that if I moved, he would withdraw, I lay still and silent as the handsome youth’s hand played over mine. Eventually, I lifted my index finger. He grasped it. Fingers entwined, we lay quietly while something built within my breast. I stiffened my finger. Immediately, he closed around it, his fist gently moving up and down my digit. Erotic! Fantastically, magnificently sexy! His fingers held me loosely, and the resulting friction sent a jolt of electricity into my groin.
My heart fluttered. My breath came shallowly. I felt as I had not felt since high school when I was in headlong pursuit of my first sexual experience. The same mystery, the same anticipation, the same delicious, soupy feeling seized me. I grasped myself with my other hand and set up a rhythm synced to the invisible fist playing up and down my finger. Either he felt my efforts or sensed them, because he slowly built his tempo. I imagined this was the way he would manipulate himself when he was alone and feeling horny. The mental image of that heightened my excitement. Once or twice, his moving fingers flinched, and I understood he was pursuing the magic of the moment for himself. Was his mental image of me playing in his mind as his was in mine?
Shallow of breath, mouth sagging, my legs trembled with the excitement of a little boy doing something he knows to be naughty but unspeakably pleasurable. My finger remained straight, sheathed by that good, strong hand. A glorious sensation rose within me where it rattled around before carrying me to a delicious ejaculation worthy of those wonder years when sex was fresh and new and truly awesome.
Those fingers gripped me hard as he went from rhythmic to spasmodic, and I knew my secret lover, my lithe, handsome, unnamed youth was experiencing his own cataclysmic orgasm. Listening hard through my ragged breathing, I heard a muffled baritone sigh. That good, brown fist held onto me tightly for a long minute before releasing me and breaking the magic spell.


My young lover was among those prisoners released with me the next afternoon. As our eyes met briefly, his firm mouth curled slightly at the corners. I tried to maneuver my way to his side, but as I succeeded, another con called him by name. Daniel. My lover’s name was Daniel. I tried to hold him with my eyes, but with one quick, knowing glance in my direction, he turned to answer his friend.
It took as long to be thrown out of jail as it did to be cast in, but eventually we were ushered into the lobby where our loved ones waited. Dismayed, I saw Nellann among them, but I understood from her frown that it was truly over. Coming to pick me up was merely her way of saying goodbye. Well, that was okay; probably even desirable, given the advent of last night.
I watched covertly as my young Daniel strode across the reception room with those long, graceful steps right into the welcoming arms of an adoring young woman. “Daddy,” a dark-haired child cried, clasping his slender legs, exciting a moment of jealousy. Experiencing a crushing disappointment as unacknowledged dreams of replaying last night’s passion faded away, I turned on Nellann in frustration.
“Sorry, kid,” I mumbled, awkwardly kissing her dry forehead as she gave me a perfunctory hug, “but it’s over.” With that, I walked away, leaving her to nurse her frustration at not being able to deliver the carefully crafted speech she’d doubtless worked on for the past forty-eight hours.
But I didn’t have time for that. I had to follow up on what I’d learned about myself during the last two days. I might have lost my handsome young Hispanic, but there had to be other good, strong hands out there; in a place the size of Albuquerque…there had to be!

*****
Talk about an epiphany kick-started by an inanity… this seems to be one. I suspect Parker Welles’ life may never be the same after his 48 hours in jail. Ah, well… we learn strange truths in strange places.

Abaddon’s Locusts, the fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series, received several positive reviews. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please post a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.

Now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say… so say it.

My personal links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive